Hello, I originally typed this up on March 5th, the game came out on the 1st March and I started this review just after I had completed the majority of the game. Now, the reason I never finished it, was because the morning after I went and bought The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and I ended up forgetting all about this review, I don’t see the point in finishing it since it’s been over 4 months since I’ve played Horizon. Anyway, enjoy my ramblings..

The Review/Ramble

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a game I’ve followed since it was first announced, in case you haven’t heard of it, it is about Earth thousands of years after humans have died and has been taken over by the machines who all look like animals and dinosaurs, you play as a village girl called Aloy who uses her Bow and whatever she can to hunt these machines. It looked amazing in the trailers shown and even better when it got round to showing gameplay. I tried my best not to get sucked in after the somewhat disappointing Watch Dogs that promised much at E3 and failed to deliver.

But Horizon kept looking amazing, and when it was delayed, it was even more evidence that Guerrilla were making sure the game was polished off. The major downside to this game, was the PS4 exclusivity, mainly because I didn’t own a PS4, however between this and Gravity Rush’s sequel both coming to PS4, I felt it was about time I got one. I managed to find one second hand and started off playing other exclusives, Infamous, and Nathan Drake Collection. It was then my PS4 suddenly became unused for a long time, only briefly being used in January to play Gravity Rush Remastered.

Horizon: Zero Dawn has made my purchase of the console worthwhile, the game is fantastic, from it’s story telling, character building, and varied combat system, all the way to the music that can sound as calming as Minecraft, or as thrilling as an action movie.

But let’s talk about that varied combat, the reason I say this is because in Horizon you have 4 weapon slots each taking a quarter of a circle, so when you hold R1 you just point your thumbstick to the right section and away you go. However as you progress through the game you unlock more and more weapons, I assumed there would only be 4 to unlock, but actually there’s about 7 or 8 in total all doing different things. The main weapon would be your Bow, it’s quick to fire, and once upgrades are bought from villages further along the game, you can unlock different types of arrows. Then there’s a long shot bow, which is slow to fire but more powerful and used to knock armour off the machines. There’s also various trap based weapons and slingshots using fire, shock and blast based weaponry. One of the more interesting weapons is the Ropecaster, which once fired at an enemy can tie them to the ground and eventually knock them over so you can attack them with your Spear.

The machines you hunt in the game are all based on animals or Dinosaurs, at first I thought all of them were based on Dinosaurs but there are only a few who are similar in design, the rest are based on things like Deer and Panthers. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses and certain weak parts so it’s important to keep switching weapons and ammo type depending on what and where you are attacking.